A slice of mummified toast,
hard, dry, and slightly grey,
with shrivelled lumps, possibly beans,
exposed when the cooker was removed.
Possibly kicked there in a spurt of anger
when it slipped from ageing hands.
Empty rooms with dusty corners,
all furniture gone.
TV gone, kitchen appliances gone,
empty kitchen drawers.
Even the waste bin emptied.
A lifetime’s colourful rugs gone,
picture ‘shadows’ on walls,
curtains and rails gone.
Just the fitted carpet left,
un-hoovered. Nobody claimed the dust.
A small pile of electronics left,
for ‘someone’ to collect.
The 'fall alert‘ system,
the ‘hands free’ emergency phone,
and a blood sugar monitor
all belonging to the NHS.
Agree with aj Gyppo. The opening image of decomposition is a hook and the flash of anger evokes the situation. The domestic of the unhoovered carpet brilliantly grounds the poem.
As a ‘spare key’ holder I went in for a last look around after her family had stripped the place and the mummified toast where the cooker had been triggered all the rest of it. One stark image which was the key to the rest.
The last several months whilst she was in hospital, too unsteady to live on her own and waiting for a long-term nursing home place, I just kept a watching brief because she had an irrational fear of squatters moving into her home.
There’s still a sad pile of unwanted furniture and black bags of bric-a-brac dumped on her front garden which nobody wanted, which will get rained on, dry out, and get wet again until the Housing Association formally reclaim the property and schedule a tidy up and renovation job.